Kingdom of Sand
by yume girl 91
Summary: There is no death, there is the Force. Reylo Post TLJ


The galaxy is his kingdom.

There are battles, hard won, failures distant, always lurking at the edge of the Resistance. In most eyes, she sees hopelessness. A knife's edge, a stone's throw and everyone would've been lost. Rey still shuddered awake at night from nightmares of Crait with its deceptively pure white surface hiding the red ochre of a salt world. She had glimpsed the primitive star fighters Poe and Finn tell her about. Rose, too, jokes when the going gets a little too tough.

Even the brief bursts of laughter are not enough to keep the darkness from her soul.

They are losing.

 _Have lost._

How much more death can the _Force_ take?

Each death rips a searing track through the universe. Rey feels it consume a little more of her spirit. The one thing that keeps her going, keeps her fighting is the _Force Bond_.

Kylo's face, his form dominating her line of sight. Rey feels hatred, sometimes it overpowers the love she feels when she protects those closest to her. Leia watches her sometimes and it's almost like she knows. Rey is willing to stare into the void if only to defeat the nightmare the galaxy has become. The righteousness of a Jedi that Snoke spoke of is a phantom in her soul.

BB-8 accompanies her during her training when she wields her light saber with powerful graceful arcs. The tiny world inside her heart is too small, too precious. All that is forgotten in the instant of battle. She fights with and without finesse. The cuts, the blaster burns, she ignores it all until she is standing alone amidst a carnage of the slain.

They asked the wrong questions, these men and alien species. The cantina is a bloodbath of darkness. Rey feels the chaos in her settle, the light not so pure. BB-8 rolls out from behind an overturned table, silent. "They didn't have what we were looking for." Rey murmurs, switching the light saber off.

Later on, she washes herself off beneath a fountain of water. The pink-tinged water runs in rivulets down her naked flesh. She can almost feel the sudden silence pressing down on her eardrums. Someone else is there with her, his presence dominating the tiled shower. She turns around furious, coming face to chest with him.

 _Oh, Force_. Her face is flaming red, hotter than the sun of Jakku. Kylo's skin is wet; droplets stand out against his breast and stomach. His hair is damp, flattened to his skull. Any farther south and her mind stutters to a stop. She can't look there. She made the mistake of looking him up and down; it's her way of accessing a possible threat. He looks…bemused.

"Why now?" She mumbles. All the water around her and her throat feels as parched as a desert.

"Why what?" He's too close, far too close to boxing her in. She's tempted to summon her blaster or- _or_ her light saber just to show him she isn't amused.

"You, me- this -this thing!" She wants to rage and flail her arms at the unfairness of having her mind connected to a monster. Why did the Force tempt her with the one thing she couldn't have? Instead, her huff was merely indignant, her eyes darting to his face. He is almost smiling; the curve of his full lips takes her by surprise. He would have a nice smile if things were different.

* * *

"It'll end." He promises.

"How?" _With your death_ , she has thought. _With mine_. Rey doesn't believe in happy endings. Half-remembered stories of fairy tales are fantasy in the harsh reality of the Resistance. Leia was a princess once, the princess of a dead kingdom. If Rey had been a princess instead of the daughter of junkers, her kingdom would've been one of sand.

"Come to me." Kylo says, a whisper thread of persistence, the merciless depths of his eyes promises chaos if she refuses. _Perhaps the deaths of those closest to her_. The bitter fact hasn't escaped her that chaos follows her. Maybe it's the bond between them; maybe it's her tough luck.

"No."

If he were tangible, standing before her, she would slash him to pieces; let her resolve sing through her veins. Only one of them must remain standing. Light _must_ overcome darkness. In the depths of her heart, she knows that's untrue. There was a prophecy in the old days, the chosen one sought by the Jedi and the Sith, someone to bring balance to the Force. Leia told her about it during a jump to the Outer Rim. _The blue and white streaks of Hyperspace flowed past the Falcon, it felt a time for stories._

 _"Sounds like a fairy tale." She was too old for a story before bedtime. In a corner, Rose, Finn and Poe swap stories. The X-Wing pilot has a penchant for telling the most outlandish things that BB-8 backs up with a chirrup that could pass for agreement._

 _Leia looked old to Rey's eyes. Aged, defeated as she sat beside her. "It was my father's fairy tale." She said. "So much promise." She couldn't bring herself to finish._ Rey has heard the ghost of the old rumor. Vader's children were his legacy along with the memory of fear. Rey doesn't see _Vader_ in Leia nor had she seen it in Luke during the brief time she knew him.

 _"Kylo…," she didn't know what she was going to say. The words ended abruptly. Kylo idolized him. The first time their minds connected, she saw his greatest weakness on full display. "You're afraid of not being as strong as Darth Vader."_ In her own voice was prejudice. Vader wasn't the monster in the end. Luke believed he could be brought back - _why can't she?_

The ghost of her own words torments her now.

He isn't Vader, not without the mask. His naked face is almost vulnerable. She can feel his appeal, the emotions bleeding through the layers of skin and tissue, infecting her mind. He isn't using the _Force_ to control her, she could fight that. Instead, he is showing her what they could have - _what should never be_. Kylo knows her too much, _too well_.

"I don't believe you."

Their eyes clash in a heated way she hopes they never will.

"Suit yourself." His voice is more than a dark menace, it is a promise he keeps, showing her through blood and fire the meaning of despair.

"Come to me."

"No."

He has everything in the galaxy except for her.

And despite it all, Rey feels a certain vicious pleasure in denying herself to him.

* * *

The Resistance fighters come and go.

 _They're afraid_ , she thinks of the new ones. Somehow, Kylo has kept his kingdom together. _The glory days of the empire have returned_ is whispered even spoken of by withered old men whose hearts are tainted by greed.

Those whispers aren't the only ones she hears.

 _It is almost suicidal to fly with her._

 _To be near her._

"Peace?"

They stare at one another. She hopes, no, _prays_ Skywalker's _ghost_ is with him constantly. It would be a fitting punishment to be tormented for the rest of his natural days and then some when he dies. _All living things must die_ ; Rey has accepted that in her gradual understanding of the _Force_.

 _In a snow-filled forest, he was desperate to become her teacher. He offered her the chance to rule the galaxy with him once. She made the mistake of believing goodness lied inside him._

"I will know peace when you are dead."

Instead of anger, Kylo looks fleetingly intrigued. "Will you?" He ponders.

The hope Rey had inspired once has faded into the twilight of dusk.

* * *

"Come to me." He says.

"I came to you and you created this world." The bond waxes with the pull of emotion. Rey can create images from memories. She shows him _Snoke, the throne room, the aftermath of Crait. That was the_ _ **beginning.**_

"Is there not peace?"

"It is an illusion. A veneer hiding the rotted heart of the First Order."

He is used to their bandy of words. He doesn't flinch nor fly into an easy rage anymore. Kylo smiles slightly and the effect is disturbing. He seems almost pleased he can get under her skin figuratively.

"There will be the peace you seek. _Soon_." It is a promise before fading into nothing.

In these brief exchanges, she sees something in his eyes. He doesn't attempt to _touch_ her, not anymore. It's enough to _look_ at her. Just look at _her_. She has the feeling he is waiting. But, waiting for what? For her to become so despondent because everyone has left her? Rey has been alone most of her life. One more person gone isn't going to break her, send her fleeing to him. Kylo will be terribly disappointed if he is waiting for that.

"Oh, you will come." He says suddenly, breaking the silence she has assiduously maintained. Rey is the one who flinches from the contact. Has he read her thoughts? It doesn't seem that far of a stretch.

"I will," Rey says, her anger getting the best of her training. The urge to give into her emotions is too much. Instead of righteous anger, she teeters dangerously to _the edge_. The loathing in her for him rises up like a coiled serpent ready to snatch him up in its jaws. "For your head!" The last part she yells and is pushed back into the gun turret. The place where the domed window allows her a pure unadulterated view of space. Where she can be alone with her disquieting thoughts.

The surge of emotion she had felt was… _rage._

It isn't so far from an outburst she had come to associate from Kylo. Momentary fear gripped her. What if she was… _becoming_ …like him? Disturbed, she climbed down from her seat into the belly of the _Falcon_. A chirruping sound came toward her from the corner, her droid, BB-9e, a refurbished droid from the First Order, bumped her legs when she proceeded to ignore it.

The droid wasn't BB-8, but was a suitable companion for surface missions. "Hey, easy." She bent, lightly touching the droid's shiny black chrome head. "I'm not going to the _Dark Side_ anytime soon." Her fingers absently rub the silver circular patterns on the droid's sides. BB-9e's head tilted, looking past her, the droid's singular red eye fixated on the other standing a few feet behind her.

The man who _was_ the Supreme Leader of the First Order smiled, touching his finger to his lips.

* * *

Rey awakens from a dream, from a nightmare.

She was six months from the Resistance, seeking out other Force sensitives. _The key is to not be alone when she faces him_ , she thinks. BB-9e hums from the corridor of her cruiser. It's a refurbished yacht, something she took pride in assembling the interior from bits and pieces. Chewbacca has the Falcon and besides Leia has need of the wookie on other fronts.

The room is cold. That was the second thing she noticed. She was cold; the temperature had dropped so far she could feel the cold beneath her skin. Suddenly afraid of the unexplainable, she struggles up from the sheets twisted around herself, the cold rushing in against her skin. Rey touched her chest; the sleeping robe was undone, exposing a goodly quantity of skin. Quickly, she reties it, wondering how it came undone in the first place.

A low male laugh echoed near her.

She'd never heard him laugh before.

"This isn't a good time," she mutters, embarrassed. How much has he seen of her body? _How many times has this happened? The shower? Awakening from a dream?_ She has the unpleasant feeling he figured prominently in her dream. Rey lifts her eyes and scans cautiously, biting back a yelp. He's there surfacing from the darkness, form blending in perfectly to the shadows of the recessed lighting of the loft. He sits there entirely at home with the darkness.

The effect of his face surrounded by wavy black strands is almost unnerving. Rey can feel his energy brushing against her own. There's too much darkness, too much chaos in the small space, but strangely it's not suffocating.

"Dreaming?" His lips curl derisively.

"None of your concern," she snaps, crossing her arms. Her nipples show prominently through the thin cloth. _She doesn't want him to think anything_ …

 _She's cold_. Too cold. She feels reluctant to get up and head down the ladderway. _What was he going to do…push her?_ She almost snorts; the breath from her warm lips is a white mist.

Incredibly, she hears the comm pinging from the front of the ship. Rey uncoils her body, sensing without another glance that he has gone, disappeared. The pressure remains on her ear drums, but she ignores it for now. It's been some time since she's had direct contact with someone from the Resistance.

BB-9e rolls after her, chirping a stream of blips and whistles. Rey moves barefoot down the cool metal and carpeted gangway to the controls. Her hands move expertly over the dash, pausing the incessant ring when she recognized Leia's call sign.

 _"Rey, I was beginning to worry! Is everything alright?"_ The faint raspy tone came through the audio speaker. She is embarrassed to find fragments of her dream lingering in her mind. No, it wouldn't do to mention dreams of Kylo Ren to Leia Organa. "No, I was…resting." As she speaks, damn him, she can feel his return. BB-9e, strangely does as well, beeping a few times in alarm. _Are droid's sensitive to the Force?_ She wishes there was someone to ask.

Leia wouldn't have risked contacting her for such a small matter. Despite the warmth in her voice, Rey can sense the underlying sadness.

 _"Rey, sweetheart,"_ a pause and the tears were unmistakable. _"We've won."_

She was stunned into silence.

Has the galaxy turned on its axis?

 _How? How have they won if Kylo is standing behind her?_ She can _feel_ him, _see_ him if she turns around. Rey begins to hyperventilate.

 _Has he turned?_

 _Yes - no_. She can feel the darkness in the craft, surrounding her, pushing at her nerve centers.

"Leia," she almost can't bring herself to speak his name aloud. For too long he has haunted her waking life, the moments when he hovers there in her line of sight, _persistent_ \- "Kylo-"

 _"Ben is dead."_ Leia instinctively knows what she's thinking.

Rey catches her breath. In a way, that's true. She accepted long ago that Ben had died inside the thing that had his face. The man she _loved/hated_ in one complex foul up. _The Force must really have a bad sense of humor_ , she thinks uncharitably. "How did we-"

 _"Hux,"_ Leia says in a rush, _"Hux staged a coup. He killed him when he was distracted. In the chaos, we pressed the advantage. The galaxy is free…,"_ in her words _, you're free_ can be heard, _"of him."_

Rey doesn't move. She can't move, can't breathe. He's much closer to her than before. His hands are on her exploring her _secret places_. The same as her dream, _I'll_ _pleasure you with pain_ , he had whispered in her nightmare. _Yes, no, no. Yes_. _Yes._ She tries to ineffectually push him away, but there's almost nothing real, nothing tangible but she can feel him pressing against her body. His touch does something to her that she can't explain. Those arms wrap around her torso in a way they never could in life. She feels the coldness on the shell of her ear in place of breath.

 _"There is no death,"_ Kylo whispers. _"There is the Force."_

-fin

AN: I've always wanted to do a _Force ghost_ version of Kylo xD BB-9e is the black droid from TLJ. Since I have a plush BB-9e, I put the droid in the story ;-)

No flames!

Please Review *-*


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